When their widowed father's business fails, the Bastable children decide to restore the family fortunes themselves. No longer able to afford school, the children have all the time in the world to devise ingenious money-making schemes: from digging for treasure in their Lewisham garden to becoming highwaymen on Blackheath Common. All too often their efforts lead to trouble rather than treasure, until one adventure finally pays off...

'She's the children's writer with whom I most identify. Nesbit] said, "By some lucky chance, I remember exactly how I felt and thought at 11." That struck...

Following The Story of the Treasure Seekers, this is the second book in the Bastable trilogy.
'We felt all it all the more becauase we had not really meant to do anything wrong. We only thought perhaps the grown-ups would not be quite pleased if they knew, and that is quite different'
Sent away to the country after a particularly unruly episode, the well-meaning but wayward Bastable children solemnly vow to reform their behaviour, and establish 'The Society of the Wouldbegoods'. But their grand schemes for great and virtuous deeds lead to just as much mayhem as their ordinary...

Edith Nesbit was a hugely influential writer whose books include The Railway Children and Five Children and It. The Bastable Series is ripe for rediscovery, and will appeal to fans of Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons, which it inspired.